This guy really lives wild in Griffith Park.  This picture was by a National Geographic photographer last year (click if you want to see it full res), but just the other day he was captured by night surveillance cameras,  between the BMWs and the Bentleys, strolling the streets of the Hollywood Hills.

Robert Redford said, “Whereas money is a means to an end for a filmmaker, to the corporate Hollywood mind, money is the end.” This attitude may why he received the French Légion d’Honneur* in 2010. Indeed, if the first part of this quote truly represents the French idea of how the cinema should be thought, the second is the reason why France tends to resist to the Hollywood industry within its cultural borders. According to a 2004 study**, the American movies dominated 62% of the market in Italy, 78% in Spain, 84% in the United Kingdom, against “only” 47% in France. This phenomena proves worldwide; even in Japan, which at some point used to refuse it more than most of the industrialized countries and where 10 out of 15 movies were American this same year. This makes sense with regards to the historical legacy of the American movies which took the advantage of the European interior market’s weakening from the end of the World War I to expand their own overseas, and to this lasting willingness of the American companies to keep going on with this idea of constant economic development over time and space for making more profit.

After our tour in the IMAX Studio this Monday, most of us got confused about the potential overwhelming presence in the movie market of those intriguing blockbusters full of explosions and possibly destitute in interesting plots, which accumulate eye-catching signs on each road of Hollywood, creating great commercials and grabbing quick attention, and targeting young people. This reminded me of my first American movie theater experience at the beginning of the year. I got disoriented watching this succession of trailers saturated with spectacular special effects seeming to compete against each other; I was waiting for one savior movie, which less noisy and overpowering, would surprise me in a more simple balance between realism and originality.

In other words, being so French that I prefer drinking coffee than eating popcorns while watching a movie, I had French expectations. But whatever the French resistance is, the American movies domination over the world is definitely more related to economic considerations than to the willingness of a cultural hegemony. This can be profitable to other cinemas: the American investments in the national cinemas worldwide offer to non-American movies the possibility of first financing themselves and second of stimulating creativity in favor of innovative ideas. For examples, the very favorable outcome of the 2005 French March of the Penguins revealed a new public for docufictions, which are not that developed in the United States; an opportunity non-Americans should seize to play their cards right. Then, the 2008 French comedy film Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis [Welcome to the Land of Shtis] almost equalized the success of Titanic in the French box office, being seen by 20.5 million people in 23 weeks, which proves that as we say in French, “the painting is not completely dark”.

* a French order established by Napoléon Bonaparte in 1802.

**Observatoire Européen de l’Audiovisuel, Focus 2005, Tendances du Marché Mondial du Film, 2005.

I’ve noticed lately that my peers don’t seem to enjoy going to movies as much as they used to, or at least not in the same way.  The same situation occurred in my family with my parents and older sister.  Going to the movie theater used to be a treat, an event.  We would clear whole halves of our day, buy snacks and sit down to enjoy a movie almost every weekend.  Now it seems to be something that people do when they’re bored or want their kids to sit still for two hours.  I became interested in the reality of this phenomena and found out that indeed research shows there was a recent decline.  Of course, people argue that film cinema has been dead for a while, and research states that over two thirds of the over 130,000 theaters are now digital.  So what does this mean for the medium as a whole?  As Emily hinted, is every medium headed to the internet? Will our moviegoing experience be reduced to watching a new movie on a computer while eating a TV dinner?

In 2011, the moviegoers’ ticket sale number dropped from 10.6 billion to 10.2 billion, not too significant when you’re looking at the numbers but enough for the average person to notice.  However, our recent trip to the Imax headquarters and the talk with Greg Foster seemed very positive about the movie theater industry (Imax sales specifically), and that positivity rings true as well.  In 2012, the ticket sales went back up and jumped to 10.8 billion.  A large number of these sales can be attributed to Imax and 3D movies whose ticket sales have been jumping enormously, as they are the newest medium.

I was happy to see that these numbers reflect how I personally feel about movie theaters.  A few years ago I, too, felt a certain ambivalence towards the theater.  I would go months without seeing a movie or paying attention to movies and not really care.  This could be attributed to the high ticket prices or development of new platforms such as Netflix and Hulu Plus that met most of my screen viewing needs.  However, I found this year that Netflix or Hulu Plus will never take the place of the movie theater.  I’ve been going often, sometimes as often as once or twice a week, seeing almost every movie in theaters.  I don’t think it’s because ticket prices have gone down or because I have a better salary, I think it’s because I’m making a conscious decision to put my money towards what I enjoy and that happens to be movies over most other activities right now.  There’s something to be said about the experience as a whole.  Clearing part of your day for nothing but enjoying a movie is incredibly relaxing.  It’s also nice to go to a setting where everyone is there for the same thing, to watch the same movie.  Whether it’s the rowdy crowd of a midnight premiere movie, or the quiet crowd of a drama, experiencing a movie with the people around you is unmatched in any other setting than the theater.

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